One of the features we get asked about a lot is whether or not the Wii U can support two GamePads. The answer is no, and that doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon according to Shigeru Miyamoto. The legendary designer admits that the company’s focus is on getting people to adopt the Wii U as a system, rather than bringing support for multiple GamePads to one system.
“Certainly as we’ve been working on Wii U, I think we’re at a point where we don’t feel it’s realistic to expect people to purchase two GamePads yet. We’re still trying to get as many people as possible to buy the system itself, and that’s where our focus is right now. For the time being, two GamePad gameplay is not within our objectives in the short-term.”
Some people have speculated that Nintendo’s hesitance to bring support for multiple GamePads is that the Wii U isn’t capable of handling multiple streams from the console, but Miyamoto says that really isn’t the case. He also expounds on the idea of having a game and the possibilities that two GamePads incorporates, but acknowledges that developing something like that would be a drain on resources that need to be allocated elsewhere.
“From a technical standpoint, I think if we decided to pursue that, technically we would be able to and we can perform system updates that would allow for that. It’s also very interesting from a gameplay perspective idea because there are a lot of possibilities with two GamePads. But, at the same time, taking that kind of approach would again be a drain on resources and require us to continue to utilize our development resources for that. So then it would become a question of where do we want to devote our resources: Is it to creating regular GamePad games, or creating games centered around two GamePads?”
[via NeoGAF]